The furry fandom community intrigues a lot of people. Unfortunately, this curiosity has not translated into a true education for most. There are a lot of persisting stereotypes and assumptions made about this community, many of them unfair. To get to the bottom of things, Gay Vegas spoke with King Elliott Ingonyama, who is organizing Elliott’s Spring Gathering in Las Vegas in early May.

Tell us a bit about furry fandom. How big is this phenomenon? It’s worldwide. There are events in the furry community in Europe, Asia, the United States, South America and Australia. It’s hard to know exactly how many people are involved. The largest conventions in the U.S. draw about 5,000 to 6,000 people. Maybe even 7,000 at this point. But not everybody goes to conventions. There are lots of people who are active in other ways. There are lots of different parts of the community. In general, the definition of the furry fandom is people interested in anthropomorphic characters. 

Many furries, not all, but many furries have a character that they associate with. They would call it a persona. That is really their alter ego.

You have anthropomorphic art. Think of characters that you would normally see as people but portrayed by animals, with all the animal characteristics. The idea basically is we look at animals and we sort of ascribe human characteristics to them. The art component of the furry community is those things drawn in that way. 

Another part of the community is fursuiters. Think of mascot costumes. Almost all of the fursuiters have characters that either they designed themselves or they worked with an artist to design. Sometimes that character is of their persona and sometimes it’s not. It’s a chance to role-play. You can be anonymous. It’s really for a lot of people quite a lot of fun to go out and just be a giant fuzzy bunny, or a kangaroo, or whatever. The reactions from people are often really quite amazing. When we were in Vegas preparing for the second Elliott’s Spring Gathering in Las Vegas, which was in 2013, we happened to be there during the National Finals Rodeo. We ended up with 15 people in costumes on Fremont Street dancing with about 2,000 cowboys and their girlfriends. And cowgirls as well. It was really just such a fun thing.

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There’s also a third group of people who are definitely further on the edge of the community, but they’re certainly part of it, that believe that they’re really tied to some animal. At the far extreme of that part of the community are the people that believe they really were supposed to be or are a tiger, a raccoon, or whatever. They were just born in the wrong body. But all of these things exist in the community. 

This seems to be about personal development as well. Would you say the community helps its members discover what they like in a social environment? Absolutely. There are certainly people in the community that this is the first way they get to socialize. They were quiet or introverts in high school or elementary school. They were geeks and nerds, or a little bit socially awkward. And that’s not, of course, true for everybody. There are clearly people in the community that were very active, lots of friends in high school and super popular. It’s a whole range. I’ll say among the younger community, that’s much more the case. You’ll find that a lot of more of the people who are getting involved today for whom it’s just another interest. And the Internet does make this stuff easier. The Internet has made all of these subcultures easy to find for people. A lot of the people involved in the community are very net-savvy and they’re very tied to the net. In the same way, the Internet really helped the young gay community. Twenty years ago, things like bulletin board systems made it easier for young gay men, or teenagers even, to connect with other people and to recognize that they weren’t the only ones. With the wider Internet, the furry community is very much connected too. And a lot of the early connections for the furry community were through anime conventions or science fiction conventions. It really has developed into its own culture now. For many of these people, it’s the first social experience they’ve had where they can really feel like they’re being themselves. Part of it is a little bit escapist, but it also lets you express yourself among people that are willing to be tolerant. 

An average fursuit can cost $5,000. What kind of people are in this subculture that can afford what it entails? There seem to be a whole range of people. The simplest group and easiest to define are the guys in tech. A lot of the stereotypes come from this. But the community has a lot of gay men who have high paying jobs and this is a diversion for them. The fursuits, there are certainly people that have multiple of them. Many people will save for a long time to get one. But you also have some people who have four and five and more. Some people make them themselves. In fact, there are some of the first fursuit makers who will make suits for other fursuiters. There’s a little bit of trading in that respect. But we also have people on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum and the proverbial basement dwellers. The people who are still in their parents’ basement. You have the whole range. We know a neurosurgeon. We know a number of lawyers. We know a number of entrepreneurs in other areas. It’s a pretty broad space. 

According to four different surveys, it’s been found that 14 to 25 percent of furry fandom members are gay, and 37 to 52 percent identify as bisexual. And then 28 to 51 percent are straight. Why do you think that is? I think there are a lot of possible reasons. This is all speculation on our part, but I would say that the biggest part of it is that it’s a very welcoming community. If you’re newly discovering your identity, it would very much be a place where it’s easy to do that. Connected with the anonymity of the fursuit or the anonymity of the avatars, all of those things help. So if you’re in a place where you’re not really comfortable being gay or bisexual, you get a chance to meet people in a way that you don’t have to start out by providing them your real face picture. In the furry community, the picture that you give them first and maybe the only picture that they ever see you as is your character. So that’s a much more comfortable thing, especially if you’re in a part of the country where it’s not as easy to be out and be gay.

It must be nice too, because since it’s not about the physical it’s a lot less superficial.

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